In Past Show

About Laurie Hogin

Laurie Hogin’s large-scale allegorical oil paintings of a mutated natural world raise issues of consumerism, sexism, and environmental degradation. Rendered in a hyper-realistic style reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch masters, neon-colored animals populate overgrown landscapes, or pose as the subject of a portrait, for instance holding a bubble-wand (The Bubble, 2008). In her well-known painting Allegory of the Free Market (1997), deer-like creatures sporting tiger stripes and leopard spots—one with a banner reading “laissez-faire” tied to its oversized antlers—frantically race down a hillside beneath an ominously smoky sky. “These creatures in the painting have become rampant because of free market policies,” she explains. “Unregulated use of land has resulted in the destruction of predator habitat. One species becomes unbalanced, in a sense, and overruns everything.”